


No but Yes

by Owlily



Category: Tales of Zestiria
Genre: (well there’s like one image), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Musicians, Fluff, Getting Together, Illustrated, Love Confessions, M/M, it’s always thematically, their friends and family have cameos but mostly it’s just them, time skips because apparently I can’t write this AU chronologically ever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 12:12:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18872983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Owlily/pseuds/Owlily
Summary: Sorey tries to propose to Mikleo. Several times. Maybe he would have succeeded sooner had he not skipped several steps on the way to marriage, such as confessing his love first, or being legally old enough to marry.At least his song writing skills got better over time.





	No but Yes

One of Sorey’s earliest memories was choosing his first violin to borrow from Gramps’ music school. He was still too small to properly play even on the children’s models, but that didn’t stop him.  
  
He had grown up (as grown up as three year olds got) being babysat by Gramps (who wasn’t really his grandfather, but rather a friend of his mother and of Mikleo’s family). Gramps was a retired music teacher and now conducting a hobbyist orchestra in Marlind, so his babysitting methods usually involved bringing the boys along to the rehearsals.  
  
Sorey didn’t mind that. Camlann was a quiet town in the mountains that he loved dearly, but Gramps’ orchestra was pretty exciting, and he loved playing violin on the spot. Sorey had more memories of playing around in Gramps’ office with Mikleo than of his own father in his home. His father was only at home for the weekends.  
  
At age six, Sorey still hadn’t given up on the violin.  
  
His father had hoped he would. Sorey could still dimly recall his father arguing that he was too young to play an instrument as difficult as the violin. He remembered the way Selene smacked Georg on the head and scolded, “That is exactly why he should start with the violin!”  
  
On the contrary. It was the point in time when he was starting to get ambitious about it. (Ambitious as in wanting to play in Gramps’ orchestra. Gramps used to ruffle his hair and smile at him whenever he voiced that ambition, telling him to be patient.)  
  
It was also the first time of many that a certain scenario would repeat itself: Sorey would propose to Mikleo, but Mikleo would say no.  
  
The first time it happened, Sorey was practicing in the living room. Specifically, he was practicing playing _fast_. Naturally, he would measure his success according to whether or not he could play faster than Mikleo was playing piano. His and Mikleo’s families were neighbours, so they could see each other across the windows and listen to each other play.  
  
Which was how little Sorey found himself leaning so far out of the window that he was close to falling out, screeching and scratching his bow over the strings on his violin. His tongue poked out of his mouth a little, which was a common indicator that he was lost in concentration.  
  
Mikleo shot him one or the other challenging look out of his own living room window. He loved to make a show out of turning his e-piano’s volume up, which usually spurred Sorey into impossible actions because he couldn’t just turn up the volume of an acoustic violin.  
  
The sounds following the bow’s movements soon became a cacophony that insulted the birds in the trees and stunned them into silence.  
  
It was fair to say that the boys’ practice hours were the loudest sounds in all of Camlann, which probably didn’t say much on a Sunday morning (or any day of the week really), but still sufficed to build them a reputation in this tiny town (being a child was enough to build a reputation in Camlann, period).  
  
Georg Heldalf regretted the day he allowed his son to pick up the violin. He lowered the newspaper in his hands with an exaggerated crackling that somehow still got lost in the noise. “Selene. Why is it you haven’t dropped off your son at the music school.”  
  
“On sundays, he’s your son,” Selene told him with a shrug, but refilled his cup with steaming hot coffee nonetheless.  
  
He took a sip, knowing she’d win if he tried to argue. He didn’t exactly see much of his son on weekdays, so he should be happy. On the other hand, he could have sworn he could hear him all the way to Pendrago at work, anyway. They had had the discussion many times already. It was nothing short of a miracle the village’s mayor had not expelled both his family and their neighbours yet.  
  
Sorey finally paused when his arm was starting to hurt. From experience, the moment of respite would be brief; children’s muscles recovered faster than a cat jumping down from a roof. Still, Georg dared to try picking up his newspaper again and maybe concentrate enough to read at least one headline. He even got to start reading the article, for Sorey was currently braving himself to say the most important words of his short life.  
  
Sorey clutched his violin close to his chest, and breathed in so deep his chubby cheeks briefly ballooned up like a squirrel’s.  
  
Mikleo had opted to lean his elbows on the piano and his head on his palms, shooting him a toothy grin. “First. As usual. Do you admit your defeat?”  
  
Sorey breathed out. “MIKLEO, DO YOU WANT TO MARRY ME?”  
  
Utter silence fell. The birds had already fled the scene. A lone cricket briefly considered using the pause to chirr, but decided against it and jumped away as if too embarrassed to play on a lonely stage.  
  
Georg froze while lifting the coffee to his lips.  
  
Mikleo blinked at Sorey in shock.  
  
Sorey blinked back at him and was getting redder in the face by the second. His grip on his violin became increasingly more desperate to the point it looked ready to crack at the neck.  
  
Eventually, Selene broke the silence by laughing loud and bright as a bell.  
  
Mikleo used the momentary distraction to scold Sorey properly. “Do you even know what that means!?”  
  
“Yes, of course! You marry the person that is most dear to you and who inspires you and makes you smile and makes you want to be a better person for the sake of them! It’s not complicated, silly!”  
  
Selene laughed even louder.  
  
Now it was Mikleo’s turn to blush. “You’re the silly one! We can’t get married, only grown ups get married!”  
  
“I didn’t say _now_! I just said I want to marry you!”  
  
Instead of answering, Mikleo shut the window and ran out of view. Sorey stared out of the window in utter distress and confusion, still clutching his violin tight.  
  
Georg sighed into his coffee. “Where did he get that from?” he asked tiredly.  
  
Selene giggled behind her palm. “Where did he get that from indeed? Your proposal to me wasn’t anywhere near as romantic.”  
  
“I wasn’t six, and you had very nearly run me over with our car when we met up at the restaurant.”  
  
“Details.”

* * *

Mikleo didn’t know who his father was. When he was little he tried to ask his mum, but she would just get sad because she couldn’t think of a good lie. She would tell him she was sorry, but she didn’t know either, but she loved him and that was what mattered. She did, so maybe it really didn’t matter, and eventually it stopped bothering Mikleo.  
  
Sorey didn’t mind; he liked Mikleo’s mum, and Mikleo’s weird uncle, and of course Mikleo himself, so he figured it wasn’t that important to know.  
  
However, one couldn’t expect random kids from the school in Marlind not to care and not to tease him upon finding out. By the time Sorey was twelve, basically the whole class knew that his best friend didn’t know who his own father was.  
  
One time a bunch of the other boys in class tried to bully him. Tried, because they got as far as Rose overhearing them tattling.  
  
Rose was an orphan and had been since her earliest childhood, so she was kinda used to it and didn’t think anything about not having a mum or a dad. She had her parents’ friends to make up for it, and Dezel, and more importantly, she had a Swiss army knife. She claimed it was an heirloom from her late father.  
  
The mere presence of a real, sharp knife was enough to scare off a bunch of twelve to thirteen year olds, and also never make them try to bully Mikleo ever again. It also got Rose suspended from school for two weeks, and the knife confiscated for her legal guardian, Brad, to pick up, when the teachers got wind she had one.  
  
Brad laughed it off, and so did Rose. She was a bit sad for losing the knife for two weeks when she had honest to the Empyreans never used it on people, but she wasn’t sad being suspended from school for two weeks. If it kept these hooligans from bullying her friend, that was totally worth the trouble.  
  
Sorey, Mikleo and Alisha came to visit her almost every day after school for those two weeks so she wouldn’t get bored, and Mikleo’s mum invited them all over for a sleepover party for one weekend to apologize to her for the trouble, so overall Rose counted the whole thing as a win. She also got more ice cream than she could eat. Mikleo had picked up ice cream making skills at that point because Camlann didn’t have an ice cream parlor, but at least electricity to run a fridge, and more than enough cows.  
  
(At one point Mikleo even tried goat’s milk from Elysia, the town at the other side of the mountain where Gramps lived. Muse carefully argued that goat’s milk would cover whatever flavour he intended to add to the ice cream. Mikleo wouldn’t be persuaded, for all ways to possibly live his passion had to be tested. The ice cream ended up tasting like frozen cheese, but Sorey claimed he loved it anyway although he still preferred the vanilla one made from cow’s milk. Only then Mikleo stopped experimenting with the recipe.)  
  
However, Mikleo might have claimed he was okay, but Sorey knew it bothered him. It bothered him to have gotten Rose into trouble, and it bothered him that it was because of his odd family situation that he could do nothing about. Things he couldn’t change ate Mikleo up from inside and made him grumpy; he knew he couldn’t do anything about it, so he tried to play it cool, but that didn’t stop him from involuntarily thinking about it.  
  
Ergo: Sorey needed to distract him. He decided it was a good point in time to try again and ask for his hand in marriage. He was twelve years old now and therefore mighty grownup, surely now Mikleo wouldn’t say no again?  
  
Maybe last time he had tried just hadn’t been romantic enough. There had been too much competitive tension in the air. So maybe he should play him something more romantic than the crossbreed of Vivaldi and a high-speed train. Romantic in the sense of “should thematically be about love,” not as in “composer lived later than Vivaldi, and may or may not have believed in ghosts”.  
  
He came to the conclusion that none of the famous violin songs he had learned in all his years of classical training sufficiently expressed a twelve year old’s everlasting love for his beautiful best friend, so he ended up playing _A Whole New World_. Just after nightfall, when he was supposed to be sleeping but hopped over to Mikleo’s house instead and brought candles and heart shaped chocolates (which counted as dinner, right?).  
  
Mikleo thanked him dutifully and complimented his technique, but pointed out that it just wasn’t the same without piano and Glockenspiel. He generously offered to help him next time, if he wanted to.  
  
Sorey felt his hopes rise up.  
  
Then Mikleo suggested they could ask Lailah and Zaveid to sing, and Sorey realised the reason why he had played this song had not exactly come across. Despite the chocolates being eaten by now and the candlelight still burning bright.  
  
“…I just wanted to play for you, really,” Sorey murmured, a little heartbroken.  
  
Mikleo noticed, gave him a hug and offered:  
  
“Shall we play our song instead?”  
  
“Their song” was a song Muse had played for them on the piano when they were very little, and they had picked it up and adapted it for flute and violin. It was supposedly a folk tune, although Muse didn’t know herself where she’d heard it. It was a lively but emotional melody that was positively heart-wrenching when the flute voice was added to it. Mikleo liked the mystery it was shrouded in, so he boldly decided that he would share it with Sorey and Sorey only.  
  
Since they never shared it with anybody else, they called it simply “their song.” Playing it for fun although they already knew it by heart was their way of capping off dual practice sessions. Playing it was a silent sign that all was well.  
  
Sharing it with Sorey and only Sorey was Mikleo’s way of telling him he trusted him above everyone else, and nothing would change that.  
  
Sorey didn’t get the hint what that entailed, but was happy enough about it and smiled through his teeth. “Yep, let’s!”  
  
When they finally went to sleep, Sorey still hadn’t managed to propose to him.  
  
The next day, he vowed to try again. Harder.  
  
He told Lailah of his misery between classes. Lailah taught chemistry and music at his school and was his favourite teacher. Possibly because she also helped Gramps with his orchestra and sang the most powerful arias, but also because she kept secrets. She tended to give “elven advice” (as in saying neither no nor yes, or giving any advice, really), but she took you seriously, and didn’t tattle.  
  
She put a finger on her lips and looked up at the ceiling in thought. “Maybe you could write him a song yourself. If you play a song about love, you might as well have played it because you like this particular song. However, if you write a song yourself, and it is about love, that is obviously no coincidence. Maybe write a poem instead? That might be easier than a violin piece without vocals.”  
  
Sorey’s eyes sparkled. It probably didn’t matter whether or not this really was a sound plan; Sorey was fine with any excuse to flex his questionable song writing skills. “Thank you, Lailah! I’ll write him a song! With lyrics, so he knows!”  
  
Lailah giggled behind her hand. “My pleasure. One more thing off my _liszt_ of worries if you two are happy. Now, _pause_ is over. I know you’re a _sharp_ lad but that doesn’t mean you can just skip class. The consequences might be _chopin_ ful.”  
                            
“Uhm. Sure,” Sorey waved over his shoulder as he scurried off back to class.  
  
The one problem with Lailah was filtering meaningful sentences from very _flat_ puns. Sorey mentally scolded himself for _that_ pun.  
  
Sorey started writing the lyrics first. He had an idea what mood and feel he wanted, but still figured it would be better to tailor the melody around the words than the other way around.  
  
The problem here was that he and Mikleo shared all their belongings, spent most of their days together, had generally only a vague concept of personal space when it came to each other, and since it had always been like that, he didn’t question it.  
  
Which was how, a few days later, they settled down in Sorey’s room, where Mikleo gracefully jumped on Sorey’s bed, and found some scrap pieces of paper covered in Sorey’s handwriting. He pulled his glasses out of their case, pushed them up his nose with one finger, and began reading before Sorey even had a chance to remember that he had left those drafts on his pillow.  
  
(Mikleo didn’t strictly speaking _need_ those glasses. However, he once got a pair of giant spectacles for reading when Sorey complimented how great they looked on him. He had claimed they made his violet eyes look even more sophisticated. Which settled the matter quickly in favour of buying.)  
  
The first mistake Sorey had made was forgetting to put the scraps of paper away. The second was not mentioning either his own or Mikleo’s name in the lyrics. (That would certainly have been too obvious. Those pop singers on the radio used random names instead of their actual crushes’ names, too, right?)  
  
Mikleo was bound to not understand that the song was about them, and indeed he didn’t. “That’s your handwriting,” he stated calmly.  
  
Sorey fidgeted nervously. “Yeah,” he murmured.  
  
Mikleo narrowed his eyes behind his glasses. (Which looked unfairly cute.) “Are these song lyrics? What song are they from?”  
  
“Uh. I haven’t really thought about a title yet.”  
  
Mikleo’s eyes went wide. “But this is a love song! You’ve never written love songs.”  
  
“Because I’ve never written a song for you before.”  
  
Mikleo subconsciously gripped the paper tight and looked back down at it. “Alright,” he declared solemnly. “In that case, I am responsible for the quality of the song’s content. I see what you wanted to do with the soil yearning for the rain metaphor here, but it’s way too over the top. And what kind of phrase is _in the moonlight, your eyes are a beauteous sight_? You also use too many rhymes. It sounds forced. I must compliment you on the iambic pentameter, the rhythm is flawless, but your rhymes are often unnatural, and I bet none of these illiterates at school will understand the words you chose. Who is it for, anyway? I think it would be kinda inappropriate if I sing or play it to anybody unless we work out these kinks…”  
  
Sorey dropped next to him on the bed and tried to think of how to divert this conversation into a direction that was beneficial to his plans. “I wanted to play it to you once it’s done. You kinda weren’t supposed to read it yet,” he admitted.  
  
“Oh.” Mikleo furrowed his brow in deep thought. “Do you have a melody to go with it?”  
  
“I have some ideas. I’m just not ready to share them yet. I’ll tell you immediately once I am, okay?”  
  
“Okay.” Mikleo clutched the paper close to his heart. “That’s good, because you can’t write me love songs, you know? But I’ll accept a song about the rain.”  
  
Sorey bit his lip. This shouldn’t hurt, but it did. “I’ll tell you once it’s done.”  
  
Mikleo gave him a soft smile. “Thank you.”  
  
Sorey gave up on asking for his hand in marriage then. (At least until he could finish writing this song.)

* * *

* * *

By the time they were about fifteen, they went on a summer trip with some of their friends from the orchestra. It was supposedly the time when you were expected to be unreasonably horny. Sorey found out that he wasn’t; he was just growing. It didn’t stop him from happily dozing off with his head in Mikleo’s lap while he was reading in the low lamp light, however.  
  
Which was how Zaveid found them when he barged into their room, and which caused his jaw to drop. “By the Empyreans,” he mumbled.  
  
Sorey continued snuggling his nose into Mikleo’s stomach and only stopped when Mikleo looked up from his book to give Zaveid a questioning look.  
  
“…Yes?” Mikleo asked, careful not to give away his confusion. It didn’t really work.  
  
“Guess I owe Edna money now. …She’s never gonna let me live this down.”  
  
The boys gave him a dumbfounded look, then looked at each other, and back. “…Let you live down what?” Sorey murmured but didn’t even think about moving.  
  
“I doubted her when she told me you two were snuggling like this was your honeymoon. Now light’s out and shoo to sleep, or I’ll separate you rascals.”  
  
To their credit, they did listen when Zaveid picked them both up at the necks of their shirts and dropped them into separate beds (an impressive feat considering that Sorey had spent the last three years growing like a young tree). They didn’t try to read under their blankets with the help of a tiny torch light, either. They even slept with their backs turned to each other, but it felt cold and weird.  
  
When they returned home from the trip the evening after, Mikleo rushed to bid Sorey goodnight and didn’t even give him the chance to suggest a sleepover.  
  
They had sleepovers basically every other day (mostly a result of spending the evenings together, anyway, so they couldn’t really be bothered to go next door when they could just stay where they were). Spending one or the other night in separate beds and separate houses shouldn’t harm them. Still, when they parted at the doorstep, Sorey felt some keen longing in his chest that shouldn’t have been there.  
  
He couldn’t sleep one wink.  
  
So he didn’t.  
  
He didn’t check the time, so he didn’t know what ungodly hour it was: he just hoped Mikleo would forgive him. He hopped out of bed, put a jacket over his sleeping clothes, put shoes on, grabbed his violin and sneaked out of the house.  
  
Mikleo’s room faced the forest side, not the side adjacent to Sorey’s house, so making _a little_ noise was usually easily forgiven. It was under the roof, however, so he couldn’t just knock on it; a time-tested method to wake Mikleo up without waking up his mother and uncle as well was to just throw sticks at the window. Not that there was a high chance of them not overhearing, but that was besides the point. He was desperate enough to face the consequences of waking everyone up if it might finally grant him actual rest.  
  
Sorey was prepared for Mikleo to furiously hiss at him to get back to sleep. Instead, Mikleo sleepily dragged himself over to the window and stared down in wonder at where Sorey stood in the low light of the lamps that hung around the house.  
  
“What is it?”, he mumbled.  
  
“I couldn’t sleep. Do you have a few minutes?”  
  
“Want me to come down? You could just have texted me…”  
  
“No, you can… just stay there, okay? Mikleo? Just listen.”  
  
Mikleo leaned a bit farther out of the window and supported his head on his palms. “Alright. But don’t be too loud, okay?”  
  
Which was the hard part about this, but sacrifices had to be made. He brought his violin into place and started playing.  
  
He refrained from trying to write lyrics for his song altogether this time. The decision had little to do with having accepted that he just wasn’t good at writing poetry, however. By age fifteen he had simply accepted that singing and playing the violin at the same time just didn’t work very well.  
  
He had never completely discarded the simple jingle that he had written at age twelve. Three years later, the entire song was done, and it took about four minutes to play. He had stopped the time so many times. He had written it in stolen moments when Mikleo wasn’t paying attention, and only played it in full when Mikleo was occupied otherwise and sure not to hear the whole thing (or even know that it was a thing and not just some tune Sorey had played to warm up his fingers). He had practiced and tweaked the melody countless times, and secretly let Lailah and Gramps give him tips on the writing – never the whole thing, however. He had only ever played it in full to himself.  
  
He had not planned to finally play it to Mikleo this very night, however. He felt the need and that was all.  
  
The song started with a very soft pizzicato that was as silent as a secret, and slowly but very surely gained intensity as Sorey moved the bow over the strings. Soon it was soaring, and gently but insistently pulling at Mikleo’s heartstrings. He could feel his pulse throbbing with every note.  
  
When Sorey stopped playing, he could feel the silence in his bones, and it ached like fire burning away his skin.  
  
Until a lonely frog croaked.  
  
“Play the same song again!” called a voice from the town. Mikleo chuckled, which relieved Sorey immensely.  
  
“Uhm, want to come down after all? For a minute?”  
  
Mikleo didn’t answer, but closed the window, and disappeared into his room. It didn’t take him two minutes to grab shoes and a jacket and sneak out of the house, but to Sorey it felt like hours of torture. It was a warm summer night, but suddenly it felt cold.  
  
“So. What was so important you couldn’t wait until the other day?” Mikleo asked and poked his nose with his finger. It was ice cold, but soft. Mikleo’s fingers always were.  
  
_I wanted to play you the song, obviously. I’ve just been tweaking it for whole three years and kinda agonized over it every other day because I didn’t know how to make it perfect_ , Sorey thought and gulped when Mikleo looked up at him expectantly.  
  
“Mikleo, do you want to marry me?” he blurted out.  
  
That made Mikleo chuckle even harder. He quickly caught himself when he remembered the hour, however. “Sorey, you asked me that already at age six.”  
  
“You never gave an answer.”  
  
Somehow, weirdly enough, Mikleo looked sad. He smiled, so it might not have been obvious to anybody, but it was to Sorey. Even in the bad light. Or maybe especially in the bad light, when he felt more what Mikleo looked like than he saw it. He wished he could have heard any of the myriads of thoughts racing through Mikleo’s head.  
  
He opted to simply run his hands over Mikleo’s arms and rubbed them gently for warmth, but Mikleo still fought with what to say.  
  
“I don’t want to think about our relationship status. If that’s okay,” he eventually said.  
  
Sorey gave him a soft smile and vowed to never try proposing to him again. They were each other’s most important person, and the details didn’t matter.  
  
“Of course.”

* * *

“Sorey, concentrate.”  
  
He did concentrate. Unfortunately, on Mikleo’s fingers ghosting over the piano keys, not on his part of the duet they were supposed to be practicing for. It was part of his very own opera (or rather, Rose’s opera; more than eight years in the making. Sorey was seventeen now, and Mikleo was about to turn eighteen in summer), so Gramps had trusted them with a key to the music school to use one of the practice rooms over the weekend when it would normally be closed.  
  
The room’s main advantage was that Mikleo could then practice his piano parts on the same grand piano they would use for the performance in the end – he still only had his old e-piano at home. So he and Sorey had packed their portable instruments and camped at the music school all Saturday.  
  
They had done nothing but practice for hours, so they should call it a day and let the practice sink in, but Sorey didn’t want this to stop. Not at all. He knew they should get ready so they wouldn’t miss the last bus back to Camlann, but…  
  
A clap of thunder finally silenced his thoughts. It also silenced Mikleo’s hands on the piano keys. Both of them turned their heads to the spacious windows and found the sky set alight by blazing green light and thunderbolts ripping the clouds apart. Fat raindrops were knocking on the windows and wind was rattling at the joints.  
  
“…Did you notice a storm was coming up?” Sorey asked quietly. Mikleo almost couldn’t hear it over the storm.  
  
“I did hear the occasional thunder rolling, but I didn’t expect it to end up this bad in April…”  
  
Another thunderclap shut them both up. The next moment, the lights went out. Thunder rolled in the distance while the lightbulbs gave one last, sad buzz.  
  
“Well,” Sorey hummed, “I guess that’s it with practice now, but we also can’t get home like this.”  
  
“No.” Mikleo sounded miserable. He took his glasses off with a sigh and stacked them away into their case. Mikleo’s way of indignantly admitting defeat.  
  
“Oh, come on. We have another half an hour. It’s just a thunderstorm. Surely it will be over soon, and we can still catch the bus.”  
  
It wasn’t over soon, and they did miss the last bus. By hours. It was past midnight when they accepted being locked in the music school for the night. Sorey tried to text his mother, but only got error messages. The thunder had stopped, but the wind was still violently shaking the windows and howling through the streets, and the rain was still going so strong single drops crept through the closed windows.  
  
They hadn’t brought any pillows (or… anything really except their flute and violin respectively, keys, phones, wallets, and the clothes on their bodies), so this was bound to be uncomfortable. They settled on the floor, leaning on the piano’s back post. Their backs were bound to hurt pretty soon, but facing the windows and watching the wind and rain fall was comforting. Now that they weren’t playing anymore, they also turned cold, so they ended up leaning on each other for warmth and relaxing their tired bodies a bit. As much as the lack of pillows would allow.  
  
Sorey thought it was perfectly normal in such a situation to snuggle close and rest your heads on each other and smooth your hand over the small of your best friend’s back and his hips, who would not complain but only softly sigh into the crook of your neck.  
  
Then he thought back to the many times their friends would tease them that “just best friends” didn’t do that. (What was this about “just” best friends. Clearly they were just jealous.)  
  
Then he thought maybe they had a point.  
  
Finally, he decided that they didn’t have a point, they would still always be best friends and always do this. Sorey had long since accepted that Mikleo was the most precious person in his entire life, and he wouldn’t _mind_ taking it a little further than cuddling and snuggling, but if they didn’t, he wouldn’t complain, either. Being Mikleo’s most precious person in return was more than he could ever ask for, and at the end of the day it didn’t really matter whether that made them best friends or anything else.  
  
He sighed, enjoying the comfortable silence, until Mikleo yawned. “Did Gramps give you the keys for his office, too?” he asked.  
  
“Nope. So if you thought we could go look there for pillows, you’re out of luck.”  
  
Mikleo groaned unhappily and buried his nose in Sorey’s shoulder. “I can’t sleep on a chair.”  
  
“We can sleep like this.” He squeezed Mikleo’s sides to punctuate. Mikleo didn’t try to squirm away despite these being prime tickle spots, which spoke volumes about how tired he was.  
  
“No way.”  
  
“Stay awake until sunrise then.”  
  
Mikleo turned so he could bury his face in Sorey’s shirt more firmly and hug him close. Sorey responded by wrapping his arms around him and carding his fingers over his back and through his silky hair. He held back sighing into it, with effort, and felt all his year-long steeled resolve to not think about what they were for each other shatter.  
  
_It doesn’t matter it doesn’t matter it doesn’t matter it doesn’t matter it doesn’t matter it doesn’t matter it doesn’t matter it–_  
  
“Sorey?” The sound was but a mumble into his shirt. He could have sworn he could feel Mikleo’s heart bumping wildly against his body. (Could also simply have been the echo of his own, however.)  
  
_It doesn’t matter it doesn’t–_  
  
“Since we’re trapped here in a place that’s too uncomfortable to sleep, anyway… can we talk?”  
  
It absolutely did matter. Sorey heard himself saying, “Of course,” without thinking.  
  
Mikleo slowly disengaged himself from his embrace, but couldn’t quite manage to meet his eyes. Sorey keenly felt the loss of warmth.  
  
“I’ve been wondering for a while. I know you were only joking back then. We were just kids and you didn’t mean it, but I never stopped thinking about it.”  
  
The fact that Sorey knew immediately what he was talking about embarrassed him a bit. He tried and failed to remind himself that there was more to his life than just Mikleo and what on earth their relationship status was. There was Uncle Michael’s latest article on bridges from the Age of the Gods, there was how to say “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” in Ancient Avarost, there was playing Tchaikovsky blind, there was–  
  
“I know this is selfish and we’re best friends and we should stay best friends but – but that’s exactly why I should have told you sooner. We don’t have secrets, right?”  
  
…Nevermind. There was nothing more important than Mikleo, not in general, and especially not  right now.  
  
Sorey shook his head and gently flipped his fingers against his forehead to make Mikleo meet his eyes. “Nope. No secrets. It’s okay, Mik. You can tell me whatever you thought. Actually – actually maybe you should have told me off sooner if I made you uncomfortable all these years. Since you clearly don’t feel the same.”  
  
Mikleo blinked at him. “Sorey. Would you propose to me in earnest, I would say yes.”  
  
Sorey blinked back. “I _did_ propose to you in earnest!”  
  
“Who proposes at age six!?”  
  
“I was sure already at age six!”  
  
“Sure you wanted to marry your best friend instead of someone you actually love?”  
  
Sorey stared at him in disbelief. His hands were itching to grab Mikleo’s shoulders and shake those stupid ideas out of his head, but he held himself back.  
  
“I didn’t want you to think I was being shallow by just saying _I love you_ or something and taking you on dates when that was what all people are doing. We’re already hanging out all day anyway, so I thought I’d owe you something more unconventional–”  
  
Mikleo stared back. It wasn’t very well visible in the dark, rainy night, but Sorey could basically feel his eyes widening.  
  
“Mikleo, let’s be honest, had I said I love you, would you have assumed I love you romantically, or would you have assumed I just love you as a friend?”  
  
Mikleo didn’t answer, which told it all.  
  
“You weren’t joking?”  
  
“Mik, I joke about a lot of things, but I’d never joke about asking you to marry me. Are you telling me you thought every time I asked you I was just playing a prank on you?”  
  
“That’s what I just told you!”  
  
Sorey was torn between crying because he felt seriously insulted and falling to his knees and apologizing. Thing was, he couldn’t fall to his knees because Mikleo was still halfway sitting in his lap and currently in a state of miserable fury, induced by lack of sleep and general frustration.  
  
Since apparently Mikleo wasn’t particularly good at taking love confessions at face value (in other situations, he could read between Sorey’s lines like in an open book), Sorey decided to go for the second option, anyway, and restore some common ground first.  
  
He moved his hands back to Mikleo’s waist and slowly dragged him back into a hug. “It wasn’t a prank. And it wouldn’t be one now, either. Maybe six year old me’s ability to think ahead wasn’t really great, and maybe it still isn’t. But for all I knew back then, I meant it. So when you said no, I thought you didn’t want to.”  
  
“No, you moron. It was because you skipped all the steps people take before marrying someone.”  
  
“I’m not people, though.”  
  
Mikleo grinned into his shirt and closed his eyes. “I am aware. It’s frustrating at times, you know.”  
  
“But only at times?”  
  
“Only at times.” Mikleo sighed. “I was sure at age six, too,” he whispered after a pause.  
  
“Hm?”  
  
“I never thought about whether or not we’re more than friends because it didn’t matter. I wouldn’t have been able to decide, I still wouldn’t be able to decide. I don’t know how other people at age eighteen know how far they want to go. I don’t know what I want, but I know that whatever it is, I would want it to be with you. I knew that at age six and knew it was too early, and yet that never changed.”  
  
Sorey nodded although Mikleo most likely didn’t see it. “If it helps, I don’t want anything to change between us. Maybe just add one or the other thing. All I knew was I wanted to marry my favourite person. So I asked.”  
  
Mikleo chuckled. “…That’s okay then.”  
  
“Sooo… may I kiss you?”  
  
Mikleo inhaled sharply. “If you want… I guess.”  
  
Sorey hummed and gently picked up his left hand. Mikleo watched as he slowly, bit by bit, like sand running through an hourglass, brought it to his lips. With every invisible grain of sand, Mikleo’s heart beat a little faster. His eyes were locked to the spot on his knuckles where Sorey’s lips eventually touched his skin, so light he almost didn’t feel it. They remained like that for what felt like hours, carefully looking up at each other under their eyelashes. The rain gently knocked on the windows and rolled down the glass, as if the storm had never happened. As if matching the volume, their voices went down.  
  
“Thank you,” Sorey whispered eventually, but didn’t move beyond raising his head a little to disengage his lips from Mikleo’s hand. “Okay?”  
  
Mikleo stared at him, figuring out what to say. He decided that at the end of the day, there was exactly one thing to make up for accidentally refusing Sorey for ten years, and then still waiting for him to make the first step (or was it the fourth, or fifth, or twentieth step?). So he pulled him down until their lips collided.  
  
Neither of them knew how kissing worked beyond that step, so they stayed like that until Sorey decided there should be more to it and opened his mouth. The motion caught Mikleo by surprise but he didn’t complain, not even when their teeth collided. When Sorey tried to pull back and apologize, he shifted his hands to grip the front of Sorey’s shirt more insistently and hold him in place, quietly humming into the kiss.  
  
They parted slowly and not further than reducing the pressure on their lips to a touch so gentle it wouldn’t have stirred a feather.  
  
“Okay,” Mikleo breathed against his lips.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> This little thing takes place in the same AU as the other works in the collection, so please check them out, too, while you’re at it! They can all be read separately but are meant to complement each other. If I contradict myself anywhere, that’s not intended and totally an accident.
> 
> “Sorey’s and Mikleo’s song” is the violin melody from [King of Whitewater](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5hoeyCNOrg). Just imagine a flute voice to go with it.
> 
> I haven’t thought TOO hard about the song Sorey composed for him, because 1) I don’t know nearly enough about songwriting, I know like………… super basic bitty basics, and 2) I’m bad at making decisions.
> 
> But something like [Wonderful Life](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qY83GRo3-Po) (Eklipse Cover – I love pizzicato openings!) or [Brave Enough](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOmc9uG1Ndg) would work for me. The latter instrumental, obviously (the lyrics give me the very hardest canonverse post-game feels from Mikleo’s POV, tho. It also happens to be my favourite Lindsey song, maybe tied with Shatter Me, and I need sheet music pls, but okay, back to topic). But please feel free to imagine whatever!
> 
> If you have questions or just wanna chat or whatever, I’m on Twitter, tumblr, and Pillowfort! (@toradhart/applegelstore/toradh).
> 
> Last but not least, many thanks to [@krisseycrystal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AisukuriMuStudio/pseuds/KrisseyCrystal) for bravely beta reading! All remaining mistakes are my own.


End file.
